DECEMBER 2014
a really long interview with
bill
laforge
BY WEEJY
n case you didn’t know it, there’s a new President at Delta State. His office sits on the 2nd floor of the Kent Wyatt building with a westerly window that overlooks the brand new bronze statue of Coach Margaret Wadea legend to Cleveland and to Delta State, a champion in every sense of the word. When now Delta State President Bill Laforge was a student in Cleveland, he would ask coach Wade to borrow the key to the gymnasium to shoot hoops. “Boy, you better bring that key back,” she’d tell him, loaning him the key. This small world has come back full circle for the president- a Delta-style small world called Cleveland, more specifically called Delta State. In this small world, when big news happens at that hidden treasure down the road on Sunflower Avenue,
everyone is affected in some way, if not opinionated in a lot of ways. This is the time where it must be stated that if you’re looking for a bashing of President LaForge in this article, you can go ahead and stop reading. You aren’t going to get it. There was time invested into this to showcase his side of the story, not the rumors or hearsay that can be the root of all bad things in a small town like Cleveland. There are no opinions here, only open questions with honest answers. President Laforge agreed to meet up with The Skinny on the day before Thanksgiving at 3:30 in the afternoon. The only apparent light on the Delta State campus was the one from the west window that overlooks the brand new bronze statue of Margaret Wade. Everyone else was off on Thanksgiving break. 363 days before this day, on Black Friday of 2013, Bill Laforge, with not even a semester behind him in his first year in his role as the new leader on campus, was wading knee deep in water, helping a professor carry his personal belongings out of the flooded
Delta Music Institute building on the south side of campus. He helped load up box after box and carry the belongings to the professor’s house, unloading the boxes until 11:30 that night. Being the President of a university, there are a lot of things you have to do that no one else wants to do. Helping a professor on Black Friday until 11:30 at night could be considered one of those things. That action is not written anywhere in the job description. LaForge didn’t have to do that at all. However, when he took the job, he was a handed the keys to a college with mounting debt and decreasing enrollment, a disastrous scenario. Seemingly drastic actions were inevitable, however unpopular those actions might be. But, there’s a whole lot more to the story, from how we got to this point, to where we’re going, and also how we’ll get there. Amidst all of the bad news that can be taken personally by those directly affected, under President LaForge, there is a very bright and somewhat progressive future ahead for Delta State. That’s a fact.
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BILL LAFORGE
How would you define Delta State in a few sentences?
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We’re an outstanding regional public university. We offer great educational opportunities at a considerable value.We’re a really good bargain for folks here.We serve the Delta, but we also serve the state and others,too.
TS: What would you consider the best asset at Delta State? BL: Our assets are really our people.We have some outstanding faculty and staff who offer great programs, as I say, “for a bargain.” Beyond that, we just have people who care and that makes a difference on a campus like ours. When you walk on the campus you really get the feeling that people care about you.Y ou’re not a number.
TS: A lot of people who get to Delta State, when they talk about Delta State, a lot of times it’s negative... The phrase “Delta Mistake” is often mentioned. How do you hone those assets of Delta State and reverse the negative into a positive? BL: Del ta Mistake... That’s a new one to me, but I appreciate you asking about that.The negative I hear on campus really doesn’t come from students. It comes from a few disgruntled faculty members. But, the students who complain are complaining about real and legitimate things that will never go away probably- cafeteria food, parking, when somebody has trouble getting credit for something or billed. Those are institutional things that part from the course. I think you’re talking more on cultural/social things. Cleveland, not Delta State. This is, it’s not a good term, a ‘suitcase campus,‘but it’s been that way for years. I was a student here in the 60’s or 70’s. In those days, we were 4 commuter, half residential. half
Today we’re less than half residential. You know, there’s always this thing about ‘ Is it a fun place to go to school?‘You know, this is not an Oxford. It’s not a Chapel Hill. It’s not a big city. It’s not a New Orleans. But, there are things going on here.But I don’t get that kind of question from students. I’ve been to about 25 high schools this Fall and 45 back in the Spring.I continually go out year round with our recruiters into the high schools.What I hear from students who don’t know about this place is ‘What is it like?‘ They’ve never heard from us. When I got here, we had no marketing budget. So, I said, ‘ We’ve got to do something about that.‘You can’t possibly be a student prospect and think about Delta State seriously if you’ve never heard of us. So, rearranged our budget a little bit to put a few bucks into [marketing and advertising]. We’ve gotten some private donor money to do that. We’re trying to advertise better to let people know that this is a fun place to go to school and there are things to do here.The negative I hear people say is, “Well, Delta State is just a second choice” or they came here because it’s ‘convenient.‘Part of that, frankly, is our mission. It’s to serve the Delta that is one of the most impoverished parts of the country. We have a lot of first generation college students, kids whose families have never been to school. We’re serving a population where
a lot of the students are challenged. I called it ‘ t he Delta Differential. ‘Many of our students come here unprepared or under prepared. We’re really the only choice they’re ever going to make versus any other college. They’re coming here, and they’re putting all their marbles into this basket. Students who have a choice to go to other universities or here, we’re competing for them too. We want that student too. We’ve got to deal with all of that in one big basket. We can’t do anything about the number of restaurants in town or whether we have a blues bar here or not or things like that. But, we can tell people that this is much more of an entertaining city than it was [in the past]. It’s fun in many respects. I’m sure there’s other things students would like to do. We need a movie house. You know,
that’s too bad, but I don’t really hear that negative. If there are specific negatives, I’ll be glad to address them. I ask [students] why they come here. A lot of them come here because it’s close... it’s accessible. We offer the programs that they want. There are all sorts of reasons, and price is usually a reason. The U.S. News & World Report just named us the number one out of state tuition value in the country. It doesn’t get any better than that. Our in state students are getting the same value. I taught for 30 years at George Washington University in D. C. The tuition there right now is $46,000 a year. Ours is $6,000. Are you getting that much more to go there? You’re getting bigger buildings in our nations capital, but would you spend $46,000 a year? That’s three Delta State educations.
TS: You c an go see the buildings at the capital after you graduate... BL: That’s exactly right. So, I don’t hear a lot of the negative. The students I see are shopping for schools. They’ve never heard of us. The students who we hear, they probably don’t come to me and tell me things like that. You guys are on the ground. You hear it. TS: Right.For the city, for us, we need the college. But the college also needs us. BL: There are those who will say, and these are not my words, but I’ve had people say over the last few years, ‘ Cleveland would be like a lot of other Delta towns if it weren’t for Delta State.‘Clearly we have a treasure here. I’m tired of Delta State being the hidden treasure of the Delta. I don’t want to be hidden anymore.I want to get out there. We’re at about 3,600 with enrollment. I’d like to see us get up to around 4,000 students again. We hit 4,000 and went over that, in fact, in the late 90’s, early 2000’s. I think we peaked at about 4,200. So, we can accommadate that number. All during President Wyatt’s years, every year there were more and more students. It was about ‘06 when we started the downward enrollment trend. We were still recruiting hard so you can’t pin it on one person- John Hilpert or anybody else. Historically in the Delta, over the last 60 years, 47% of the people in the Delta have moved away. So, we’ve lost a huge population of the Delta. More recently, the number of high school students available to come to college in Mississippi have become flat.So, all eight state supported schools are competing for the same students. Every time Ole Miss, or Jackson State, or Alcorn, or the Valley gets a student, we lose one. It’s a tough market place. Our biggest feed are community colleges. More new students come from C.C.’s than from high schools, but we’re recruiting hard in both. In high schools we’re really expanding out. We were successful this year. It was the first time in eight years we’ve had an increase and we’re really
BILL LAFORGE happy with that. I’m devoting 2 or 3 days out of my week, as much as I can, to student recruitment. From donor fundraising, to nurturing our alumni, and ad to doing media visits. There’s a lot of high energy here that the average person in Cleveland or even a lot of our faculty here don’t even know because that’s what we’re supposed to be doing while they’re teaching. Our first mission is classroom instruction. We’re all supporting that. That’s the only reason we’re here. TS: Where do you see Delta State in 5 years? 10 years? BL: I think Delta State can grow back to where we were at 4,000, 4,200, even 4,500 or upward eventually. It’s going to be a tough road because this market is even tougher. On the heels of a great football season by Ole Miss and Mississippi State, guess what, they’re going to have a great recruiting year just for general students. We have to fight that. I think as we go forth, we have to continue to offer, in a very direct and understandable way, the good programs we have. The nursing department just got another $100,000 grant yesterday from a foundation in Hattiesburg. We need to continue our strong areas
the first step was to have the blues conference that we had several weeks ago which was a smashing success. We had 500 people. 12 countries were represented. 35 universities were represented. That was just the first prong. We’ll do that every year now. It is now our signature conference in the Fall just as our signature conference in the Spring is our race relations conference. We call it “Winning The Race.” Huge success. We’ve won a national award for it, go figure. We didn’t do it for that reason, but we won it, so be it. We’re the rightful place to have a discussion on that, believe it. We’re also the rightful place to have an academic focus on the blues. So, we will also be starting a curriculum, a studies program on the blues- enhancing what we already have. We will have a minor starting probably in another year or so and maybe a major and then go from there. Then we’re spinning off a leadership business incubator related to the blues. We’re trying to educate and empower the local area to understand the incoming influence of music and tourists and blues so they can buy into it economically. With the Grammy Museum coming up, with the focus on the blues, with the D.M.I., the BPAC, and with the
The state used to give us about 2/3rds and the 1/3rd came from tuition. Now, it’s reversed. I’m faced with that, and I’m not going to raise tuition again next year. I want us to be accessible and affordable. We raised our tuition in ‘09, ‘10, ‘11 eight, nine, and nine percent. That’s huge. The University of California just approved a 5% increase [in tuition] over the next five years, each year. That means a 25% increase. I want the California market to look at us. Good students and more money allow us to do greater things. I have an optimistic future in mind. We have a few challenges and distractions like getting our budget back in a sound position. That’s number one along with increasing enrollment. I’m probably boring you to death... TS: Oh no.. This is good stuff, and we came here, so... BL: Well, we have some exciting days ahead. But we had to get our financial house in order. TS: The blues courses you mentioned, would that be through the D.M.I., the Music Department, or across the board? BL. That’s all to be determined right now. With some of our grant money, we’re going to be paying
still not baked yet. It’s not even in the oven yet so stay tuned. I’ll have to give you some of these: I had some designer [guitar] picks made, and I use them in recruiting. The terrible, horrible, corny pun is, I want kids to ‘pick Delta State.’ They roll their eyes, buy they remember the moment. TS: You could just play them a tune and toss them out... BL: That’s right.. Tell them I’m a rock star. Right in front of them recruiting, I’ll throw out five or six, and I have their attention for the next ten minutes anyway. TS: Then you’ve got to throw another pick or a drum stick or something... Is there any kind of time line for the blues program? BL: We’re going to begin the development of the curriculum this coming calendar year. So, during 2015, the Spring semester, we’ll develop the curriculum. I don’t know if it will be ready to go next Fall. I would like the minor to be, but it may not be. It depends. We’re putting our blues project under our Delta Center for Education and Culture. We just hired a new director of that program, but there will be a “Blues Project Director”
We don’t have that around here... We need a blues club...You know, who’s going to provide the transportation to get all these tourists to come to the Grammy museum, to Indianola, to Clarksdale, to Greenville, to King Biscuit Somebody’s going to come up with a transportation system, and they’re going to make a lot of money. TS: Cleveland needs Delta State in order to survive. What can you say to the community to reassure us that what’s going on now will help Delta State/ Cleveland’s future? BL: We’re here to stay. Delta State is a part of the fabric of Cleveland. We’re an island within Cleveland. We couldn’t have better town relations. The mayor and I happen to be high school and college classmates. We’ve known each other forever, but we want a stronger and more vibrant relationship. We’re both working for that because we are interdependent, and we know that. We want to support each other and as Cleveland develops its master plan for growth, we’re going to be a part of that. TS: You’ve stated that the financial issues with Delta State are an inherited problem. How did Delta State get into
I think Delta State can grow back to where we were at 4,000, 4,200, even 4,500 or upward eventually. It’s going to be a tough road... but also develop our niche areas like D.M.I., G.I.S., social work, accounting, aviation because those are the programs that a student in Tupelo or Biloxi will hear about and say, “I want to go to Delta State for this.” I see us growing those niche areas, and for example, the blues. The reason we’re having a blues project under way that just started this year is to create a new identity for Delta State that puts us on the map. It’s a dream I had before I got here, and it’s really to make us the academic center of the blues worldwide. It sounds ambitious, but
great Music Department. Those five prongs, in a music center, are just too good to be true. We will be the “University of the Blues” in the years ahead, and right now, it’s not costing us a penny. We got a $500,000 grant from the Herrin Foundation in Jackson for the first three years. We’re trying to do this on other people’s nickel if we can because I’m managing scarce resources here until we get our enrollment up and steady. I’m not going to get more money from the state. Since 2002 on, the way we get our revenue has flip-flopped.
professors to develop the curriculum. So, it’s going to be very academic. It will lead to a minor, then later a degree, and perhaps some day graduate work. The curriculum is going to be designed to be interdisciplinary and will include music, the D.M.I., Political Science, History, Geography, and business courses. So, it includes a wide span of subject matter that will really allow people to understand the culture, the history, the politics, the economics around the blues and the development of the music genre itself. It’s a cool concept, but it’s
under that person. We’re off doing those three things I’ve mentioned: The conference, the curriculum development, and the incubator. TS: The incubator idea sounds interesting. That’s why Keep Cleveland Boring does Art in the Alley. A lot of people who graduate want to do something after college. It’s free for artists, so it’s for those who can’t afford a gallery. BL: Right. We can also do other things, and some of them are simple. Somebody could set up a gift shop focused on the blues.
such a financial mess in the first place? Is there anything that you can point to specifically that led to this? BL: Basically it’s all interconnected, but it’s connected to declining enrollment over a period of several years, which meant revenue started going down here-not only tuition from the students, but the match money from the state. As enrollment went down, our expenses kept going up. When I got here, that’s what I saw. We had debt not being serviced right. We had a huge cash flow problem. We got down to a 5 point last year where we might have
BILL LAFORGE had 1 or 2 days of cash reserve. That’s a terrible model. So, we were under the gun to, number one, increase all of that- spend more wisely on campus. Nobody was spending illegally or unethically, it was just not smart purchasing. We’ve revised a lot of the ways we do things. The problems really were from the past: Our expenses were growing and our enrollment was going down. It was as simple as that. So, how do you fix that? You increase enrollment. We’re working hard to increase enrollment, not only by recruiting but with retention… keeping students at school. We have had a worse problem with losing students who were already here than getting new ones. We bring in a lot of new students every year, but we lose them for a lot of reasons. So, we have new teeth in our mechanism to keep students in school through the Student Success Center. Retention efforts that include a first year program called “First Year Seminar,” which is like the old orientation program on steroids. It’s more academic now than it used to be. We even have an early alert system. If students are goofing off, falling asleep in class, not showing up, we intervene. The whole idea is to help that student succeed and get them from the first day they walk into school to when I hand them a diploma.
Wyatts. The scholarship program has already been funded to the tune of $110,000, and that will be invested with more money that will come into it. Proceeds will go to pay scholarships to keep kids in school. We backed into that. Last year, we did an inauguration with private dollars, and we had about $25,000 of that left over. So, I said, ‘How about some immediate scholarships to students who weren’t going to be able to come back to school 2nd semester?‘ We identified 18 students and gave them scholarships from $400 up to about $2,000. Every one of them came back, and one of them graduated with honors in May. That put chills down my back. That’s what we can do that makes a difference. The retention scholarship works. This is something new, but I don’t care if it’s new or not. If it works, we’re going to do it. And, we are doing it, and we’re going to continue doing that. We just received a tremendous grant from the U.S. Department of Education for $1.6 million. It’s called a First In The World Grant. Only 24 universities in the whole country got one. We got one. It’s going to support the staffing programs at our Student Success Center. So, we’re beefing this up big time. We’re serious about this. It helps with recruiting because I can look a student in the face or a parent in the face and say, ‘Your student can come here, and we’re going to support them better than ever.‘ We’re really giving it everything we’ve got to keep them here. The two biggest
challenges when I got here are still the two biggest challenges: Enrollment, and getting our financial house in order. Our accreditation as an academic institution depends on it. Nobody did anything wrong or bad before us, but they kind of left us with a hole in the bag.
is hugely transparent. There aren’t big secrets on this campus. There’s still conspiracy theory out there, but our cabinet is very representational of our campus. For the first time ever, our student body President sits on my cabinet. For the first time ever, the chair of the administrative staff council sits on my cabinet, and the faculty senate president sits on my cabinet. We have the vice president, the head of athletics, the head of our foundation–12 or 13 people sitting around a table who are my think tank. They voted to support this budget cut and these program eliminations unanimously, with student input. We’re trying to do this fairly and openly. You’re not going to please everybody all the time.
institutional. Really, what it came down to across the board was “what is it that we’re doing that we can’t afford to do anymore.” We can’t be all things to all people. So, all of our chiefs on campus were looking at their respective areas, went down the list, and asked, “where can we cut?..” All the way down the chain, in every area, and then it came back up with suggestions. So, we had a long list from academics to non-academics. Then, there was a winnowing process. Some of it was fairly easy and apparent to look atsomething like the laundry where we were having a huge drain on the treasury- and say, it’s time is gone. It was much more difficult to look at cutting positions like what we need for facilities management to keep the campus looking nice, to the custodians in our buildings, and especially our faculty. At the end of the day we looked at the program cuts for degrees. We started with 28 that were teed up. We looked at sheer numbers. Students vote with their feet. We narrowed it down to ten and then narrowed it down to five. The final five were the ‘worst of the worst.‘ Not that they’re bad programs. Frankly, I hate cutting them all. All of us hate it, but under the guise of ‘we can’t be everything to everybody,‘ we have to take what scarce resources we have and put them in the support of the things we do have that we have to continue doing. In two or three of those courses, there were four students. In a couple of them there were nine. The five programs, you’ve probably read about them or heard what they are. Unfortunately, three of them were in one particular division. Unfortunately, one of them involved a professor who was our Kossman Award winner within the last few years. He was chosen as the outstanding professor on campus. You know, that’s terrible. And, he’s a Clevelander. We say it’s not personal, but it’s absolutely personal to them. I absolutely get that. The students who are in the program feel personal about it. But,
DSU
TS: That’s a pretty thoughtful thing to do for students who would be easy to forget about... BL: Within the first couple of months of class meetings, you get a pretty good snapshot on how you’re going to do. What happens is students get behind, and they drop out for performance reasons or for financial reasons. That’s another thing. We’re really emphasizing scholarships. Both scholarships in our budget and private donor scholarships. We have a brand new thing called retention scholarships which gives scholarships to students to keep them in school. We just started one honoring the
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TS: Well, someone had to look at all that and say, “Something isn’t right...” BL: All of our predecessors had great reviews with our college board because they did run a good ship. Oddly, we spent a lot of money just before I got here, and I’m not quite sure why. We haven’t figured that out. We spent a lot of money we didn’t have to ahead of time. We’re climbing out of all that. I believe in collaboration, in a real team effort. It might seem a little bit boyscout-ish, a little corny, but, that’s where we’re headed. TS: Well, if it works.... BL: I hope you can tell from what I’m telling you by all this is that this
TS: How did you make the decision on what to cut? BL: It all started last summer at the Summer Retreat or ‘Advance‘ as I say. We put a very thorough and thoughtful process in place that took about three months. It started in late July. We started from the top down and then went from the bottom back up to the top. We took a total review of the campus. We put every program, every service, every office on the table. Nothing was sacrosanct but four things: Recruiting, the Student Success Center, Retention, and Marketing and Communications. Those four were not going to take a cut. Everything else was fair game. None of this was done looking at individual people. There was no retribution. It was
BILL LAFORGE in the scheme of things, there were only 41 students affected and each one of them will be able to receive his/her degree. They’ll all be taught out to the end even if it takes two years. So, nobody’s going to get left hanging. At the end of the day, what it came down to is 46% of the budget cut came from the academic side, just under half a million. 56%, just over half a million, came from the non-academic side. Only 24 positions were affected. Out of those 24 positions, 14 of them will be dealt with through attrition- either retirements or we just won’t fill that position. Ten people are affected. Five of them are staff, most of them are in the laundry. I’ve gone over and met with them personally. We’re going to do what we can to put them somewhere else on campus or help them get a job off campus. We have someone off campus who’s actually offering them jobs. It’s really kind of a nice deal. So, we’re going to be as compassionate and understanding as we can be. For the five professors, it’s more difficult. First of all, two or three of them will stay until we teach out their degrees. So, they’re not going to be leaving next May. One or two of them might be, I’m not even sure. So, you hear the person or persons who feel grieved by it or don’t quite understand the process. They feel picked on. They feel like they’re the victim, but there was no victim intended in all this. It’s unfortunate, but those things happen in business. We had to do these cuts, so… That’s how we got there… A lot of thought went into this.... Not everybody’s going to be pleased 100% of the time. It’s just impossible.
have two or three students and getting $600 or $700 from each of them? That’s breaking your neck. Yes, we’re supposed to be a university, but we’re not a charity. You get to a point where you’ve got to do something. You can’t do everything you’d like to do. I’d love to have a lot of other programs. People say, ‘Well, you’re adding the blues and you’re taking this other stuff away…‘ But, that’s not costing us anything at all right now. We’ll have to absorb it three years from now, so I’m betting that we’re going to be up in numbers. That’s something we can lay down as a marker for ourselves going forward. A lot of this is change. People don’t like change. They resist it.
You know, I want to have a journalism program. I want to have a theater of arts program, but we can’t afford it right now because we don’t have the students. Leadership and management require decision making, sometimes with scarce resources, and that’s what we’re doing. It’s going to be a tough, knocked thing. I feel for some of these folks. Some of them were retiring anyway.
GO
TS: ...And those programs won’t be coming back at any time? BL: We don’t know. I would love to have them all come back. They’re all great programs. We just don’t have the demand by students. The insurance and real estate major in the College of Business had classes with two or three kids in them. We can’t do that. It costs about $14,000 for one class, and you
TS: They’re terrified of it. BL: People say, ‘It’s tradition.‘ Tradition is only what you did yesterday. I’ve been here a year and a half now. I wasn’t brought here just to hold the key to the door. I was brought here to do something. I made a commitment to that, and it’s a calling for me, so we’re making some changes. TS: ...And it’s not like you enjoy taking people’s jobs from them either.. BL: Heavens no. It is painful. There’s no glee in doing these things. It is painful. You hate that it affects people first and foremost, but it also affects us.
TS: Some people question the raise that the State gave you. What’s the story with that? BL: It’s really simple. The Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Education has a compensation policy for the four major universities and for the four [regional universities]. The four regionals are “the W’, the Valley, Alcorn, and Delta State. So there’s a set salary for each. When I got here there was no negotiating. There was no discussion. I told them I would come here for a dollar a year if I were a rich man, and I’m not, so they pay me. In November, a year ago, they raised the amount for regionals an increase of $12,000. It wasn’t a bonus or anything. It wasn’t anything I did or didn’t do. It was just there. The real reason they added it is because the new guy who came on at Valley apparently made a case for a higher figure. I didn’t know about it for about a month. This is not something that has anything to do with salaries on campus. This was all board driven. I have a contract directly with the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Board Education. We didn’t have a hand in it. I’d wind up giving more money to the foundation in charitable donations over the last year much more than the equivalent of that $12,000. It is what it is. It was just given to me. To give it back as a matter of protest sounds real symbolic to somebody who doesn’t like me.
FI EN CON KITCH
DENTI
AL
...Continued from last month... Life is an interesting thing to look back on once you’ve reached the end of the rope of whatever it is you’re looking back at. I can pen-point the day I walked in for the interview at the Fairfield Golf and Country Club in Fairfield, Iowa. I was just as green as the grass is on the other side in the kitchen world, save a grilled chicken debacle. I didn’t know what minimum wage had gone up to on account of previously financially getting by on playing gigs and fixing up a house in Iowa with the hired help of three Amish dudes. At the interview at FGCC, I was just fired up at the potential to have a job... A steady job in somewhat familiar territory granted in a pretty much unfamiliar place. Iowa, the Hawkeye State. Aside from my new boss, Ryan, I didn’t know anyone at FGCC. But, I knew by rope’s end we would all know each other on a restaurant friendly basis. I wondered who would fill which restaurant roles: The angry person, the funny person, the fixer upper, the new guy, the lazy one, the peace maker, the wise one, the one who is always a liability risk, the quiet one, the experienced one. It never takes too long for everyone’s identities to be revealed in those restaurant employee categorical roles. You can constantly be reminded of why the lazy one still has a job because of how funny he/she is. The angry one, who throws pots and pans when he/she burns something still has a job because they are the best and most experienced one. The liability risk still has a job because he/she can make peace between the front and back of house, is really good at fixing things, and always has a dirty joke up their sleeve. Eventually, all the strangers who I would now be working with would become one crew. I would be welcomed as the new guy. The new guy from Mississippi. By the end of my Fairfield Golf and Country Club rope, I would be.... Well, I’m not really sure... I would be the guy going to be the new guy at some other place I guess... 7